Chinazo Opia Cunningham Bio -
Chinazo Opia Cunningham helped lead Northwestern to its fourth-consecutive Big Ten championship in 1987 as the conference's Freshman of the Year. She led the team that season with a 0.38 ERA in the circle, a number that still ranks as the second-best total in NU single-season history and the third-best mark in Big Ten history. She was a first-team All-Big Ten and a second-team NFCA All-Region pick in 1987.
Cunningham went on to pick up All-Big Ten accolades in all four of her collegiate seasons, earning second-team nods in 1988, '89 and '90. In 1990, she was the Big Ten batting champion with an average of .348. In the circle, she concluded her career with a 1.19 ERA to rank fifth in NU history while also leaving Northwestern as the school's record holder for on-base percentage with a .374 mark.
In the classroom, Cunningham excelled as a three-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree and a two-time CoSIDA Academic All-America selection. She was named a first-team Academic All-American in 1990.
Cunningham earned a medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) before completing her residency at UCSF and NYU. She now is a member of the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y. She also received her master's degree in clinical research methods from the Einstein College of Medicine in 2008. She is married to Everett Cunningham, a Northwestern alumnus and former NU baseball player. They have three children.
